The invention relates to a microscope for quantitative determination of a substance in a specimen such as cancer cell.
Recently, the art of clinical examination has made a remarkable progress. In particular, chemical clinical examinations have achieved such a high level of automation and simplification that almost every examination, including highly complex examinations, can be made in a routine fashion. On the other hand, the automation and routinization of the examination employing microscopes is delayed in progress because the treatment and determination of specimens require skill as well as labor and time. By way of example, the diagnosis of cancer may utilize the examination of cells under a microscope, in particular in the area of cervical cancer which represents the highest frequency of malignant tumors in the field of gynecology in order to enable an early diagnosis and an early remedy. The examination of cells under a microsceope is recognized as a useful contribution to the early diagnosis, and has been employed in the screening and periodic examination schemes. As a result, the number of specimens examined in this manner is ever increasing. The diagnosis of cells under a microscope involves a subjective determination of morphological differences between normal and malignant cells, and the determination requires a high level of cytological knowledge and a close and careful examination. An exact and rapid determination of various features of a number of specimens such as the diameter of nucleus, N/C (nucleus per cytoplasm) ratio, nucleus staining, chromatin granule, nucleolus or the like is not readily attainable even by a skilled worker.
As a consequence, the decisions of physicians experienced in the diagnosis of cells may disagree. Therefore, it is important to the accuracy of determination that the subjective standards be removed from, but the objective standards be introduced into the determination during the diagnosis of cells. To employ the objective standards, it is necessary to consider the mensurability of a plurality of parameters which are utilized in the determination. An attempt is made recently to choose various mensurable parameters from morphological observations and to establish reference values for them which can be used in the quantitative determination between normal and abnormal conditions. This has led to a conclusion that the distinction between normal and abnormal conditions is possible by choosing the size of nucleus and the quantity of desoxyribonucleic acid.